On Criticism and Hypocrisy

Recently, an interesting incident came to my notice.Although I was a third-party spectator to this incident and don’t have access to the details , it probably went this way –

A show was performed by a group of people, who we shall name X . To make the show entertaining , members of group X slogged for over a month, sometimes staying awake for even 36 hours a stretch.In a nutshell – they put their heart and soul into the show. The show finally happens , but does not go down well with the audience, who make their disappointment clear in a review . However one member of the audience Y , goes a step further and gives a scathing, disparaging ( apparently even arrogant ) review .Members of X get offended by this review and launch a series of slurs and insults at Y.

Let us look at the situation carefully here. It looks quite familiar to us , considering we stay in India – land where criticism is hard to accept for most people.We are a nation whose politicians get reporters bashed up for reporters unfavorably about them. When we view the above incident now, verbal slurs hardly seem a big deal.

Hence , I do not wish to argue on who was right in the above scenario. It emerges that both parties were at some fault , and without getting into the knitty-gritties of who started it and other childish stuff( I have had enough of those in my class) , let us get straight into the point. I am solely against the argument given by X to secure the right to abuse Y. The argument given by Y was this: ” Y has no knowledge of how a show is made and hence has no right to comment. Being unqualified in the art of show-making, Y has to be a silent spectator”.

Seriously, are you kidding me? The reason I found the above argument amusing would become clear when we look at the behavior of people like the members of X in similar alternate situations, suggesting hypocrisy.

They watch international cricket and football matches and automatically acquire the right to comment on whether Sehwag knows cricket and whether Roberto Mancini or Arsene Wenger knows how to manage a club.

They know nothing about how a country is run but feel free to make comments like “This government is a seriously screwed up on.They epitomize bad governance.”

They believe that they know the nuances of filmmaking, the theme and inspiration of the director and tell friends on which films are shitty and which are not. ( i.e, which films you should download and cause a loss to the producer and which should not)

They launch victory parades filled with verbal abuses against competing rival shows on being victors.

X might now counter argue that in these situations, they were not serious but hypocrites as they are , they won’t give the same benefit of doubt to Y. X would even argue that the above instances are not similar, but if they look carefully, I am sure they will notice the striking similarities.

My free piece of advice to X : Stop being hypocrites. GROW UP. ( I fail to understand how the adjective BAD can offend grown ups. Even fourth grade kids in my class do not get affected by it).